#69: The Chicken Princess Reigns
Pancake towers; samosa chat; butter curls.
Hello! Today I slept in and ate my hyper-fixation breakfast (chia seeds in water; greek yoghurt; toasted almond slivers and cashews; banana) and took Ilya up to the roof for some time in the sun. The world is weird, yet life is good, which also feels weird. I have nothing much to report otherwise, so on to the main course we go.
Pancakes at home. I’ve never taken Pancake Day (a.k.a. Shrove Tuesday) seriously, as I believe one should eat pancakes anytime one wishes. But I’ll admit enjoying a stack at home during a week inundated with imagery of lacy crepes and soon-to-topple soufflés is endearing, and almost inevitable. So I’ll stand corrected: one should still have pancakes as often as medically necessary, but one should also have them on pancake day.
I used our trusted Alison Roman recipe, tweaked: two cups of milk and 2 tbsp lemon as a buttermilk replacement and for a thicker batter; butter for the pan as well; frozen blueberries clumped together once the mixture is dolloped on the pan for more of a concerted berry moment as opposed to evenly distributed pockets of juicy tartness. Served alongside bacon and eggs, as requested—I’m not an egg-and-syrup girl myself but Ivan’s childlike glee made up for the sweet scramble.
Biang biang noodles at Master Wei, our post-Curzon Bloomsbury go-to, after a screening of No Other Land (a must see). After relative commitment to ordering a version of this for years, with occasional deviations in favour of the medium plate chicken noodles, I can finally say I’ve cemented my order: the pork biang biang noodles with tomato and egg, but minus the pork (it doesn’t need it) to double up on tomato egg. Somewhat silly order acrobatics, but the result is, as Millie would say, silly delicious.
Speaking of Millie, pre-order her book if you like Japanese food and live in a home with a kitchen, which I expect is most of you! It comes out next month.
Ivan and I had a faultless (gifted) meal at Dove, despite missing the gorgonzola burger bandwagon (they only do 10 a day); the grilled prawns were some of the best I’ve had, and I will order a prawn dish whenever the opportunity presents itself. But we peaked late at the fior de latte soft serve with cookies, which took the form of warm, buttery oat biscuits. I’d go back in a heartbeat for this, and the burger.
Dhaba 49 has for years has been our go-to Indian takeaway: while stuck at home in the troughs of Covid, having lost all sense of taste and smell, our first bite with an inkling of flavour was the butter chicken from this humble Maida Vale joint. We usually order in, but this week’s in-person visit was rewarded by a starter of Punjabi samosa chat, in which tangy curried chickpeas and potato chunks were crowned with a sweet yoghurt and their verdant green chutney (which I could drink). In my friend Lola’s words, the chat was a dish that just wouldn’t be the same having travelled, and I’m now more inclined to journey to it.
Speaking or journeying, we once again ventured south to New Malden for Korean barbecue at Imone BBQ. I may be cheating by naming a full feast rather than a single dish, but what is KBBQ if not an assemblage of various combinations, the grilled and fried layered and punctuated by the soupy and fermented? If I had to, the samgyeopsal (grilled pork belly, enveloped in lettuce with kimchi and raw scallion salad for the perfect fatty-fresh bite) and haemul pajeon (seafood pancake, hefty yet crisp to the last square) were the heroes.
The benefit of going at lunch is that you can balance out your grill-side meal with an unnecessary but joyously cold mound of rice cake bingsoo at Cake & Bingsoo Café down the road—which is maybe New Malden’s most popular spot—and walk off your lunch while stocking up on instant noodles and asian pears at the super-sized H Mart nearby. We did just that, and the beach bucket-sized kimchi in our fridge is giving me a lot of satisfaction just knowing it’s there, towering over our smaller condiments.
This email’s namesake was had at Oslo Court, and bore the full name (HRH) Chicken Princess Oslo Court. For the unacquainted, the restaurant (named after the art deco residential building it sits beneath) is what we journos jump to call an institution. Being deliciously of its salmon-tableclothed, butter-curled time, it’s among a cohort of nostalgic stalwarts (see Daquise; Ottos; Sweetings) that in recent years has drawn a visibly younger crowd, partly by being the antithesis of an East London small plates wine bar.
The food is perfectly good—my chicken was lovely, with the creamy mushroom sauce doing the heavy lifting—but you are really going for the attentive service and to essentially travel decades back in time.
Given my order, it was probably for the best that we weren’t presented the most indulgent sides (creamed spinach; cauliflower cheese) during the theatrical offerings that go on until you can no longer see the colour of your plate. We ended with dessert and cocktails, and their dirty martini is the briniest I’ve ever had (complimentary).
The last three meals were enjoyed Hong Kong, and the restaurants are named in last month’s guide, hence the late paywall.
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